BELLS--BELLS-- BELLS

Hokitika Guardian, 11 May 1929, Page 6

BELLS--BELLS--BELLS

ff. iiinong the noises that htfve at lust roused the question of how much longer the brains and nerves of a swlering generation can stand the eveimcreasirtg tumult which belongs to the my world the voice of the bell was decided to be an unnecessary noise, what a lot we should miss! U is unnecessary, when one comes to mk of it—so is the song ol the lark mid the silver pipe of tlie rohm-yct would we, B we could, silence any m uiese sounds? Bells riu (r us from childhood to ag°. mul are fraught with all the memories mid suggestions of each stage m hie that no mere noise brings. Probably we got our first introduction to the Frond, language when we lomned from our school hooks, "f _ u cu-lcw ” .(or “ eonvre-feu ”) bell that in the reign of William the Conqueror to command the putting out ‘‘ fires at sunset, for fear of lire through ,1,0 niglit ill the wooden houses of the Ofirin, we got, perchance, one of o"’most impressive lessons on the lewan s of villainy when we read “ Ilm .»c" : cape Bell.”, and trembled to tollo'' " Ralph the Rover ’’ to his merited

“ Hear the sledges with their fells, silver bells,” sings Edgar Allan Too and, like a skilful phtycr on ’ the glasses,’ touching each bell til t "laughs, or tolls at his command, m that swelling, onomatopoeic refrain “ Pel's—Bells— Bells.” ~ Dickens, so evidently a lover of bel has onlv once, T think, .an unkind word of them, when he speaks ol chinch bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp flat, or cracked,” that rang over the streets on a certain gloomy Sundae. “making the brick and mortar echoes h’deous.” ButYtlie spirits of the bolls m “ The Carol ” are touched with loving baud. ~ , Tennyson, again, in bis Yale and salute to a passing and a umidyear— Ring out wild bells . . • ring Out the feud l>f ,-icii and poor, ring in redress to all

mankind —shows what a bell can say,, when a poet rings it. , If we look at that picture by which Millet is best known to the genera public—” T2 Angelas ”—we see a painting struck into being, so to say. bv tlie sound of a bell, and the bowen heads, and still faces of the tw- hmaule peasants arrested in their toil by that sound, show that no mere noise has rriven them pause. ... Sometimes a bell achieves the individuality of a person almost, when it receives a name. Down by the sule ot a irrev firth, in a little church, not so long "ago laid low, hung a bell that

pealed lor many a year over the place of “Highland Mary’s” rest. “Tam o’ Lang” got his name 'from an odd manner of giving his strike, but, to many who once listened to his' voice, “ Tam ” would, because of the associations connected with it, seem a sweet singer. Marriage bells, mourning knells—when a nation rejoices, when a nation weeps-—tile bell is a vox populi, saying for us things too deep in our hearts for our own lips to voice. . . . Old years pass to their chiming, and new years enter, with all their hopes and latent possibilities, to the stroke of a hell. King out the false, ring in the true . . . Ring-happy lolls across the snow . . . No, we could not afford to “ scrap” the bells if the bells would still keep their message sounding in the sentiment, the poetry, and the idealism without which the world’s voices would l,e “ gey timmer.”—Rita Richmond, in an exchange.